The former Bishop in Jerusalem has lost the second round of his court battle with the diocese over the ownership of a church school in Nazareth. Last month an Israeli court upheld a magistrate’s ruling ordering Bishop Riah Abu al-Assal and his family to turn custody of the “Bishop Riah Educational Campus” in Nazareth over to the Diocese pending a final court decision.
In a statement filed on its website, the Diocese in Jerusalem said that shortly before his retirement in March 2007, Bishop Riah established a charitable trust staffed by members of his family and sought to transfer the assets and administration of the diocese’s Christ Church School in Nazareth over to the new “Bishop Riah Educational Campus.”
Sawani takes TEO lucre and the diocese is embroiled in lawsuits. How very much not surprising. Is Bruno paying for the lawyers?
Anyone who had the misfortune of working with him while he was in office will be aware that, not unlike his predecessor, he carried on like a fascist potentate and actually did the Palestinian (and Palestinian Christian) cause a good deal of harm through his strong-arm tactics and rhetoric. The other side of this is that the US Episcopal sugar daddies who funded and fawned at his/their feet were persistently blind to the abuses of power. Plus ca change…? On the upside, some of the younger leadership at the Cathedral in Jerusalem seems to be cut from an altogether better cloth.
Somehow Riah will find a way to blame Israel and the Jews for this, I’m sure. He is an apologist for terrorists and the lap dog of +Massachusetts. Trust me, I know, I lived there for many years.
robroy, this case is definitely a win for the good guys. Sawani is a conservative, Riah was not.
You’ll have to look at degrees of difference between the two rather than “he does x, therefore he is bad” — it’s more like “he does less of x, I wonder why”.